Determining scaling in known phase diagrams of nonionic microemulsions to aid

constructing unknown

Joakim Balogh *,1

Department of Chemistry University of Coimbra, Portugal

Physical Chemistry, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Lund University, Sweden
*Corresponding author. Fax: +61 7 33654199.
Advances in Colloid and Interface Science 159 (2010) 22–31

abstract
Microemulsions based on nonionic surfactants of the ethylene oxide alkyl ether type
CmEn, have been studied thoroughly for around 30 years. Thanks to the considerable
amount of published data available on these systems, it is possible to observe trends to
make predictions of phase diagrams not yet determined. Strey and Kahlweit, and
subsequently Sottmann and Strey, with coworkers have studied and published phase
diagrams for systems with a fixed ratio of oil to water, varying the surfactant, the so-
called Kahlweit fish-cut diagrams. Some properties of the phase diagrams can be scaled
to become general and not system dependent. Here are shown two examples of scaling
data from phase diagrams and the use of trends to determine phase diagrams, both inside
and outside a dataset. The trends of microemulsions with fixed ratio of surfactant to oil,
the so-called Lund-cut diagrams, are also investigated. The trends are used to determine a
new phase diagram and this is compared with previously unpublished experimental data
on C12E5-Octadecane-Water system. The scalings and trends make it possible to get good
estimations of many of the important properties of the phase diagrams, both temperatures
and surfactant concentrations of interest, by investigating one sample in the 3-phase
region of the balanced fish-cut diagram.

Keywords: Nonionic microemulsion, Trends, Scaling properties, Phase diagram,

Ethylene oxide alkyl ether CmEn
© 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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